[UA] Reactive vs Proactive Players

[Chris Cooper]

--- Frank Cord Lohmann <f.c.lohmann at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/14/06, Chris Cooper <insectking at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Okay let me put this down.
> 
> In your list, you definitively forgot the supportive
> NPC...

The Supportive NPC is, for me, a form of disguised
carrot. Maybe the catalyst string for the
carrot-dangling. 
 
> Oddly enough, it seems to me that bodily mutilating
> reactive players'
> characters only serves to disconnect them from the
> game, while
> emotional trauma draws them in. 

I think it could be but then it depends on whether the
GM is a relentless power monster. I am presuming that
any such amputations will be rare.

In light of what
> Chad wrote earlier, I
> think bodily mutilation might also be seen as some
> sort of
> "punishment" for doing something "wrong", for
> missing what the GM had
> intended, by the reactive player.

Interesting this could be taken in three ways: 1)
emotional punishment is a safer, vicarious damage for
players; 2) it is a reward for playing well as if each
trauma is another notch in the success thermometer;
and 1) and 2).
 
> So yeah, heartbreak.
 
> > This then could devolve into a He Said She Said
> > exercise in Rape in RPGs.
 
> Errr... What? Where did this come from, and what's
> it supposed to mean?

Whenever generic gamers start discussing trauma in
RPGs in somehow becomes a discussion on rape in RPGs
as Bad Playing or Good Playing as realism vs fantasy
trope argument.
 
> > This is fine for a UA Global game but what about a
> starting UA cabal?
> 
> For a achy-breaky-heart angle, have all the PCs
> start the game in love
> with  the same NPC, who subsequently disappears
> under strange
> circumstances, leaving the PCs heartbroken, minus
> their
> money/car/stereo/dog/other precious thing and being
> suspected by the
> authorities of being responsibly for the
> disappearance. 

There was a guy on RPG.NET who wrote up a bunch of
interaction cards. Players picked up an interaction
card for each of the other player's characters. The
players then had to rationalise why they felt what the
card said about the other PCs.

The best
> chance for clearing their names for the PCs is to
> find the NPC, which
> should also settle the question of whom he/she
> really loved (and was
> it a "he" or a "she" anyway?). 

This is a variant on the Supportive GMC. There's a
whole range of GMC archetypes.

C.


I have a damn blog. Happy now?

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