Survey (Scouts) campaign difficulties

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Hummmmm.... I'd just flat out tell my players : ''All PCs must be members of the Survey Team.'' That's the party concept.

I do, and I explain exactly why. But I always get at least one player who insists on playing a marine or a naval officer or a field logistic technician or whatever, and is prepared to explain at length that his character will be involved in the adventures. But of course, such players always get more involved in the confrontation with local society that their character's actual duties bring about. Last time I ended up with a marine and a Naval shuttle pilot out of a party of four.

Sometimes it's good to lay out some broad criteria for what the players can and cannot play.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have players who recognise that I wear the viking hat, and who just do what they are told. I take an extra lithicarb and lie down, and it goes away.

Players who want military backgrounds can have always doen a term or two in the Nay/Army/whatever before swithing to Survey.

Nice use of "swithing"!

I don't think multiple characters would work very well, really. It's very tricky to pull off, tends to create confusion and lack of focus for the players; and often leads to weak RP, as players treat ''extra'' PCs as chess pieces instead of actual characters.

My players play a different character each week in a different campaign, why not in the same campaign?

Adventures in Survey are almost never tactical. Most PCs go unarmed. The problem is nearly always deciding what to do. Having extra chess pieces doesn't help.

So to be clear, players would only be playing one character at a time. The Survey group might discover a problem, who would pass it to the policy group for a decision (everyone change characters except Head of Survey). Then the policy group might decide to Send In The Marines (everyone change characters except marines contingent leader).

I am surprised no one wants to play a I'd play pretty much any of those in your campaign. Too bad I'm not in your campaign. Sounds fun. A super cool agronomist with high ranks in Agronomy, Shotgun,and Zymurgy [making booze aboard ship, using a micro-still he built himself, using spare parts and junk].

Given the way the adventures are supposed to work, playing an agronomist mostly means that you talk to farmers and discover what is going on in their lives, and that when there is a social problem with the nutrition level or food supply or distribution I pass the information to the group through you.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex

Given that not all character roles are equal in terms of the amount of limelight they're likely to get, try to shift which players run the more prominent PCs of any group. For example, don't let one player run the commanding officer of more than one group.

Good point. I was figuring on having each player playing the leader of one group, those four or five characters making up the policy group. The fact that each player has to have one character in the policy group means that everyone has to play the leader of one group. Whomever plays the captain get prominents in both the Naval adventures (which are rare) and the policy group (which gets to hold discussions and not actually do much). I think this structure automatically handles a lot of spotlight-sharing and role-separation.

And try not to let anyone play their own direct superiors. This cuts down dramatically on the need for people to talk to themselves.

Good point. I think I have it covered by having each player playing only one character in each group. The captain's direct subordinates are the department heads, each of which is some other player's team-leader character. Every other team has one leader and no other character for the leader's player. Each player has characters at two levels in the TO, and the only case in which one is under another is that the captain's player is superior with his captain hat on to all his other characters: but in every case there is another PC in between.

Make, or have your players make name tags or choose character appropriate props.

Hats would be good. I could get a bunch of black (for Navy), khaki or green or DPM (marines), blue (for Colonial Office) and grey (for Imperial Office) baseball caps, and get appropriate insignia embroider on them.

One of my players, who is pretty decent at accents has a character with a Russian accent and one with a Western Texas twang. This vastly simplifies figuring out who's talking to who at any given time.

Unfortunately I seldom encounter a player whose range extends beyond Aussie and Convention Mexican.

Try to avoid switching between character groups except at "chapter breaks", and if possible, have players all playing characters from the same group at the same time.

Good point. I vaguely had that in mind, but it's useful to formalise teh thought.

If someone wants to play a character outside of the roles you're thinking of, you might allow them to do so. But I might insist that their other characters be more in line with what you're looking for. No more than one oddball per character group or per player.

Hmm. Worth bearing in mind.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

My experience has been that it's possible to run a campaign with multiple characters for each player; I've run several with two each, and one with four. But you have to have the right players. I have one player who detests having to split her focus and won't play in a campaign that demands it.

I had thought that separating each player's characters into different teams with different duties would solve the two-characters-at-once problem, but I suppose there are players who want or need a more sustained focus.

On the other hand, if your campaign only really works if the PCs are the survey team, is there anything that stops you from defining the campaign as "Players with take the role of members of a field survey team investigating newly discovered worlds"? If it doesn't work to have them play the bus drivers or the security guards, can you just not offer them that option?

Strong resistance from the players. The last six attempts at a campaign in this schema have all been announced as campaigns for the field researchers. Each has had at least one player (and usually two) who has bridled strongly against playing an academic, or at least against playing an academic while I am GMing. In the most recent instance, that included two players who had rated the campaign very highly in the prospectus. When those players have asked to play a marine, or a shuttle pilot or whatever I have always tried twice to dissuade them, but in the end I am not bossy enough to insist that a player play a character they he or she has three times declined a request to play, or rude enough to tell a player to his face that I don't believe him when he says that he can keep a non-Survey-Team character on the same focus as a clique of the Survey Team.

Sometimes it's easier to get players to stick to the theme if you announce the theme at the outset.

I do. But perhaps I don't communicate effectively. Or perhaps I need a wider circle of players and to select more stringently for Survey campaigns.

Of course, your players might say, "I don't think I want to play that"—but if that's their reaction, you won't get anywhere by tricking them into it, either.

Indeed not. But I'm not trying a trick here. I'm trying to offer a deal, accommodating the campaign somewhat towards the inclinations of those who want for whatever reason to play off-topic characters in exchange for an undertaking to play an on-topic character part of the time.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Strong resistance from the players. The last six attempts at a campaign in this schema have all been announced as campaigns for the field researchers. Each has had at least one player (and usually two) who has bridled strongly against playing an academic, or at least against playing an academic while I am GMing. In the most recent instance, that included two players who had rated the campaign very highly in the prospectus. When those players have asked to play a marine, or a shuttle pilot or whatever I have always tried twice to dissuade them, but in the end I am not bossy enough to insist that a player play a character they he or she has three times declined a request to play, or rude enough to tell a player to his face that I don't believe him when he says that he can keep a non-Survey-Team character on the same focus as a clique of the Survey Team.

Here's the deal. When they complain about not wanting to play a Survey character, after the campaign was announced as one where everyone would play a Survey character—and you concede the point and let them build some other type of character—you have taught them that you aren't really serious about that requirement; in the words of an old joke, it's more a guideline than a rule. And that means that the next time you circulate a prospectus, they'll look at the scouts campaign proposal, and say, "Oh, well, we don't really have to play scouts; Agemegos will back down and let us play pilots or marines or whatever." And then they'll vote for the campaign on that assumption. This may look as if they're consenting to a campaign with the particular theme you have in mind, but really they're not; you've encouraging them to give you misleading indications of their preferences. And naturally you end up with a campaign that isn't what you wanted.

On the other hand, if you're prepared to be a cast iron SOB, and say, "You agreed to play a Survey character, so you either build a Survey character or leave the campaign," there may be some short-term losses involved; but by establishing that you will take what they vote for seriously, you're giving them a strong reason to vote for what they really want to play next time around.

Given that you've established a track record of backing down, though, I don't think I'd recommend just springing this on them. Rather, tell them that you've run into problems from letting people renegotiate character roles, and you're no longer going to do that—so when they fill out your next prospectus, they should for for literally what they're willing to play, and not count on adjustments. Then if they vote for a Survey campaign, you've gotten their informed consent.

Don't you have a background in economics? I'm surprised to see you running afoul of such a classic case of perverse incentives. You say, "perhaps I don't communicate effectively," but it seems to me the primary problem is that you communicate that you don't really mean it when you say you want to run a Survey campaign, by the very fact that you give in.

As to rudeness, if I invite a group of people over to play poker, and one of them says, "Well, actually, I don' t like poker; can we play go instead?"—they're the one who's being rude, to me as the host and to all the other people who showed up expecting to play poker. When you accept an invitation to an event of type X, you don't get to ask to turn it into an event of type Y.

Bill Stoddard

[Anaraxes]

Unable to abolish suttee, they can't work up the enthusiasm to save just one widow... Only one was a thoroughgoing success, and that only because it degenerated into one Imperial naval officer and two marines conquering an alien spacefaring civilisation.

Do you find this scope to be part of the problem? Some players might prefer more epic / cinematic / Romantic stories. It could seem frustrating to tour the sector and catalog all the problems you can't fix. Real life is full of unfixable problems. For many, the escapism of roleplaying might also entail having the power to fix problems and to make a difference, unlike real life.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Do you find this scope to be part of the problem?

I find it a problem in Survey campaigns, but not in other campaign schemas in the same setting. Players don't try to fix the world when they are playing detectives with the Department of Justice, or when they are playing mercenaries, or when they are playing dilettantes, or when they are playing investigative journalists, or when they are playing Undercover Division secret agents, or Naval Intelligence spies. But in Survey campaigns it has been a recurrent problem that players won't stop staring off into the background.

Some players might prefer more epic / cinematic / Romantic stories.

For those I run different, more suitable campaigns. For example, I am just in the process of starting up a campaign in which the PCs are going to be ANZACs transported from Ypres to ~Barsoom by an unexpected effect of a secret weapon.

Players who would prefer more epic / cinematic / Romantic stories ought to vote for the corresponding campaigns when I canvas options.

It could seem frustrating to tour the sector and catalog all the problems you can't fix.

Perhaps, but that is no reason to ignore the problems that you can fix. If any player wants to play a character who becomes ineffective when frustrated they ought to choose a different campaign, setting, and GM, because this campaign schema is about dealing with foreground problems, this setting is about a super-realistically problematic background, and this GM doesn't hand out warm fuzzies on a plate.

Real life is full of unfixable problems. For many, the escapism of roleplaying might also entail having the power to fix problems and to make a difference, unlike real life.

My stock in trade as a GM is realism, not escapism. I run some escapist stuff (the upcoming Red-Blooded Earth Men campaign, for instance, is all about unearned escape from the horrors of industrial warfare to the romantic and heroic tropes of a nobler age. But I don't run all escapism because I find wish-fulfillment fantasy dull and self-indulgent.

Besides, what do my players have to escape from? They are young, rich, and free, and the one who is married was married recently enough that he is still very much into it.

My most recent crop of Survey players are engineers, programmers, and a researcher. For all that those can be rewarding jobs they have their share of tedium and frustrations. I would have thought, though, that escaping from those frustrations and the particular drudgery of such jobs would attract players to people rather than abstractions, and to having effect by making choices and doing stuff, not to wrestling with vast inhuman abstractions and trying to solve puzzles.

[Anaraxes]

Interesting that the same group of players has such different reactions. Maybe there's something about the scope of a star-spanning background that causes people to "zoom out". It was sometimes hard for people to really realize in our Traveller games that planets really were entire planets, large enough to contain entire campaigns in other genres.

Besides, what do my players have to escape from?

Everyone always has something to escape from. Escapism isn't a psychological disorder or caused by an intolerable life.

Realistic or Romantic is really just a matter of fashion and preference; the stories are still stories.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Interesting that the same group of players has such different reactions.

And particularly, that different groups have had the same different reactions. Something's up with the campaign set-up.

Everyone always has something to escape from.

Indeed. It was a rhetorical question. I ought to stop using figures of speech. They just get me into trouble.

[Shrale]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I find it a problem in Survey campaigns, but not in other campaign schemas in the same setting. Players don't try to fix the world when they are playing detectives with the Department of Justice, or when they are playing mercenaries, or when they are playing dilettantes, or when they are playing investigative journalists, or when they are playing Undercover Division secret agents, or Naval Intelligence spies. But in Survey campaigns it has been a recurrent problem that players won't stop staring off into the background.

Sounds possibly like they just aren't interested but have no alternatives to turn to. Maybe they don't want to hurt your feelings, esp if they know how much time you sink into preparation.

What has worked ? Maybe stick with that. Load the Survey campaign into the NPC role and then permeate your DoJ or Undercover Division with it.

I agree that watching something like Perry Mason can get silly when every ep they find a murderer, but at the same time, there's strength in that, since people who tune in know what to expect. In the USA this gets reinitroduced to us by sports: football, baseball, basketball, hockey, even auto-racing. More or less the same thing over and over and over.

As in my first post, I often find themes which are extremely interesting to myself, and would fuel both my passion as a player and GM, but most likely other people don't share.

I don't think it's necessarily an error or wrong, it's just the way it is.



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you might try writing fiction about the setting. that's another way to fuel your own flame about what you find interesting, and allow you to get ideas for games -- just a thought -- YMMV.



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[GoodGame]

I don't agree it would cause the problems to take a 'god' game focus.
To me it sound like you want a more realistic portrayal of an operation, with multiple tiers of command and organization, fully-staffed. My thought of giving the PC's a single character with multiple honoraries was so they could reduce the number of staff, not for them to say be both emperor, financer, explorer and pilot. Instead they could be pilot-explorer but with a controlling interest and board vote at the higher levels of the operation, with such power afforded them by virtue of them being uber-minions of their nation /megacapitalists.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

That would exacerbate the problem of players fixating on the unfixable problems of nations and societies and neglecting the human-scale problems that the adventures are about.


Why on random die rolls?

I have run such campaigns about eight times with a full complement of NPCs. I don't think anything will be achieved by having those NPCs behave at random other than to make the players less inclined to trust them with anything important.

I just said random to decrease the burden on the GM. To me the type of realist organization you're depicting sounds like 50 some NPCs of multiple strata. Something I wouldn't want to GM over or dole out as multiple incarnations of PCs for the players to manage.

YMMV.