Survey (Scouts) campaign difficulties

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

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.

There is much in what you say.

[DAT]

I'll second Bill's assessment, you now have a "push-over" sign on your forehead.

But to get to the question of ideas for how to improve, here are some thoughts:

1) Start with a clear indication of the acceptable character professions in the campaign prospectus (it sounds like you did this)

2) When first approached with the request to run non-standard characters, offer a compromise: e.g., rather than being a current marine/navy pilot, why don't you use that as your background, i.e., you did a term or two in the marines/navy , then went back to school on an ex-military educational program (e.g., GI Bill in the states) to get a degree in X, and then joined the scouts. If they approach this idea with enthusiasm, I’m even willing to allow them a few extra points (assuming GURPS or other point buy system) to get appropriate background skills that are not likely to be used or useful in the campaign (e.g., Soldier skill, weapon skills for weapons not part of their kit, driving for a vehicle they won't encounter, etc.).

3) If they don't like the compromise, remind them again of the focus of the campaign and that they are at best taking a NPC supporting role without much screen time: e.g., there will be a couple adventures where all your pilot gets to do is make a normal conditions piloting rolls to land the shuttle, or, there will be a couple adventures where your marine will get stuck guarding a door (that doesn't really need to be guarded) becausee there is nothing else he is qualified to do.

4) If they really push for a non-stardard character, I'll let them do it, with a penality: e.g., if the scouts are 150 point GURPS characters, I'd let them build a 100 point marine or navy pilot. If they are so determined to play the non-standard character that they are willing to take the penalty, then I may mitigate the penality to my favor: e.g., offer to give them 50 points in skills apropriate to a scout by saying they picked them up during their last tour or some other background story. If they agree, I give the story that the normal scout with these skills is ill/dead and from scanning the personel files, it was found that the character has the needed skilld so is "temporarily" assigned to support the scouts.

[Voidstar]

Originally Posted by DAT

I'll second Bill's assessment, you now have a "push-over" sign on your forehead.

I'd disagree with that assessment, Agemegos is'nt a push over... he's accomdating the player without railroading.

Players want diversity at times, just show them diversity can be a bad thing as well as a good one.

Players need to stay on the focus of the game... otherwise their wasting the GM's time.

[Shrale]

Originally Posted by Voidstar

Players need to stay on the focus of the game... otherwise their wasting the GM's time.

pretty much, but it's colored by who they are. if they're friends it's probably easier to spot. if they're just being disruptive, well then that's different.

but Bill's right. The "Now Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads!" approach isn't bad, make sure they understand that they've made a deal with you and now it's time to hold up to that bargain.



>

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Voidstar

I'd disagree with that assessment, Agemegos is'nt a push over... he's accomdating the player without railroading.

I disagree.

Some years ago, I ran a campaign on the theme of alien first contact, in which an advanced alien race showed up in the solar system in the late 1930s and sent a team to Earth to say, "Hello, you ignorant primitives, let us help you develop an advanced and enlightened civilization." The prospectus specified that each player would have two characters: a diplomat appointed by one of the major nations of Earth, and a scientific advisor from a different nation.

If one of the players had said, "But I want to be a marine," or "a pilot," or "a spy," that character concept simply could not have been made to work within the campaign premise. The campaign was about people talking with weird aliens who looked like big-headed secretary birds. A combat troop wouldn't have been authorized to talk at that level. And while I was willing to have the campaign end in war, that wasn't the goal; that was the stick driving the characters forward, as the carrot was access to all that alien technology. I had no intention of actually running combat scenes.

Should I have set aside my entire campaign theme to gratify some stubborn player who had signed up for a campaign that clearly and explicitly focused on diplomacy and cultural interaction, when they wanted to play a character who was designed for a combat campaign? I don't see why. In fact, I'd say that such a player had been engaged in deliberate fraud by voting for a campaign that they had no wish to play in, and I would be thinking seriously about whether they would ever get invited to fill out another prospectus.

There's room in this kind of approach for variety. I allowed players to take the roles of actual historical figures; as a result, the diplomats included George C. Marshall, Winston Churchill, and Tojo Hideki, and the scientists included John von Neumann, J. R. R. Tolkien, Carl Gustav Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and Enrico Fermi—we saw some lovely conversations between the Italian Fermi and the Hungarian Jew von Neumann, for example. (On the other hand, the woman playing de Chardin couldn't have roleplayed fear if you'd pointed a loaded AK-47 at her head.) Background material is cool. But the player has an obligation, when they sign up to play in a campaign, to create a character who actually engages with the theme of the campaign, as the GM defines it. Asking for this is not railroading; it's running the campaign you intended to run, and the campaign the other players are expecting.

The logic of this does somewhat change when, as Agemegos has, you have a majority of players want to build characters for a different campaign entirely. But to me, that clearly demonstrates that Agemegos's cooperative attitude has reached a level of pathological excess, in that he's lost the ability to define the campaign. At that point, it's time to adopt a new meta-approach.

Or as I like to say, "If the government doesn't trust the people, why doesn't it dissolve them and elect a new people?"

Bill Stoddard

[Voidstar]

I get the impression that the player doesnt want play on the more intellectual level of the scientist and then feel left out. Is it possible that the player does'nt want to feel railroaded into a position that they feel uncomfortable in but being human is unwilling to admit it for fear of feeling dumb or excluded?
People work in the multiple tiers of command and organization, fully-staffed daily. Doing it in game seems burdensom.

It is possible to craft a campaign too narrow or tightly, and its possible that running the same style of game too often can be part of the issue.

Again, I disagree that Agemegos is a push over... he argues his points too well and he does'nt back down from his position.

Thats why I dont see this as his backing down, I see it more as players personal issue.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Or as I like to say, "If the government doesn't trust the people, why doesn't it dissolve them and elect a new people?"

I don´t know his players, and himself not very well. Two things that are not clear to me is to what amount they are just players, and how big his pool is.

If some are personal friends as well, that can make it much harder to drop them. The group I am playing in occasionally accepts stuff out of friendship we would not accept from somebody who was nothing but a player to us. The game is important, but friendship is too.

And it makes a difference for how hard I would be willing to negotiate, or whether at all, whether I have a pool of 20 would-be players or 4.

[martinl]

Quick Thoughts:

I get a weak impression that part of the problem is that some of the players:
A. Don't want to play scientists in Foresight. (Comment on FB list.)
B. Don't want to play scientists with Agemegos as the GM. (Comment on this thread.)
If these impressions are true, perhaps these problems can be addressed. If false, please ignore.

Two reasons people might prefer "heroic" scale solutions in a survey campaign:

I. Precedent. Cpt. Kirk could always fix an entire planet by killing the machine god and teaching the natives (of one primitive village) to kill and ... um ... procreate. (Or if you prefer, Picard could convince everyone to see reason. More implausible than the Kirk thing, really.)
II. Time pressure. In an extended cops campaign, one can work to solve problems, from the bottom, one step at a time. In a Survey campaign, you are going to move on next month.

Finally, the core idea of separate characters in separate depts sounds like fun, but I suspect that it is tricky and not to everyone's taste. So try it out and see if everyone has fun.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Voidstar

I get the impression that the player doesnt want play on the more intellectual level of the scientist and then feel left out. Is it possible that the player does'nt want to feel railroaded into a position that they feel uncomfortable in but being human is unwilling to admit it for fear of feeling dumb or excluded?
People work in the multiple tiers of command and organization, fully-staffed daily. Doing it in game seems burdensom.

Yes, and there's an honest way to deal with this, which is to say, "No, I'm not interesting in playing that kind of character in that kind of campaign." Whereupon you don't run that campaign; you run something people are really interested in. Happens to me all the time; I've been trying to sell a Call of Cthulhu campaign for three or four cycles. Agemegos is not getting that response; he's getting players who say, "Yes, I'll play a Survey character!" and then show up and sell, "Well, really, I want to play a marine."

It is possible to craft a campaign too narrow or tightly, and its possible that running the same style of game too often can be part of the issue.

Again, if the players will actually say, "No, I don't want to play that," the problem can be solved.

Again, I disagree that Agemegos is a push over... he argues his points too well and he does'nt back down from his position.

Thats why I dont see this as his backing down, I see it more as players personal issue.

The player behavior is to lie about their willingness to run the kind of character the campaign calls for, and then to show up and demand to play action/adventure heroes in a cerebrally focused campaign, forcing the GM to distort his scenarios to provide an action/adventure theme. The GM's behavior is to accede to their demands, which (a) results in an unsatisfactory campaign that disappoints the expectations of the players who actually wanted a Survey campaign, (b) encourages the players to give inaccurate votes because they get away with it, and (c) in the long run, gives Agemegos a player population where the majority can come into a campaign expecting to turn it into something different from what he volunteered to run, and have him attempt to do so. That seems to be the equilibrium outcome. And you know, past behavior predicts future behavior: it's realistic for the players to expect Agemegos to give in and say, "Yeah, ok, run your marine/pilot/spy," and it's realistic for Agemegos to expect the players to go on asking to run such players.

You can call it what you like. But Agemegos's current course is leading to certain results that Agemegos finds unsatisfactory, and that he could change, if he paid the price for adopting a different behavior pattern. Though of course the change isn't guaranteed to lead to a better outcome. There's always a risk to be taken.

Bill Stoddard

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Brett

Anyway, I have an idea about how I might make this work better. Each player has four characters: the leader of one team (captain, ambassador, head of Survey, and marines section leader (plus maybe first lieutenant, chief planetologist, or chief social scientist if there are more than four players)) and a junior member of each of the other team. The adventure hooks are more varied, allowing survey team adventures, marines adventures, diplomat's adventures, naval adventures: this allows the players who want to play marines etc. to do so, but not when it is inappropriate. Everybody can get involved in policy discussions in the person of their team-leading character. If -ographer and -ologist characters discover something that ought to be deal with by diplomats or marines, they can pass responsibility where it belongs without the players losing all place in the adventure. And if everything goes well you can leave one group of characters wrestling with the intractable grand problems and cross to a more personal-scale issue with a "meanwhile, down at the aid station".

I think I'll have a crack at running this campaign by VOIP (using Skype), as one of two monthly campaigns I intend to start in August.

Owing to time zone issues, I intend to run one campaign at about 09:00–13:00 GMT on a Sunday for the convenience of players in Europe, and one at about 22:00–02:00 GMT for the convenience of players in the USA. Details are not yet settled.

There is a post in the Player Finder forum.