Please help me evaluate these Kickers for awesomeness. I used TonyLB's experimental Kicker format. I've never used Kickers before, please tell me if these are good, bad, need help, whatever. If I need to provide more information about the campaign, just say so (I'm not sure what is needed and I don't want to inflate this post more than necessary.

TonyLB said:

So the new (and experimental!) technique that I'm going to be trying is a variant on Kickers. The questions I ask my players:
<ul>
<li>What was your character trying to achieve before the story started?
<li>Why do they, as a person, uniquely need to achieve this?
<li>How did it go wrong?
</ul>


Player 1 (Tim):
I've rethought my character a little. Instead of being a
heart-of-gold bandit (Zorro-style) I'm thinking he's much darker.

Answers to questions:
1. Kill all the commanding officers in the Gaul army that abandoned
his family's estates.
2. Personal Revenge.
3. The *killing* went well. In fact he probably killed most (if not
all) of the people he planned on killing...but it didn't make him feel
better. He's now a hunted man, and while it is unlikely anyone would
know that *he* is the Iberian bandit, he doesn't sleep well.

Player 2 (Will):

1. What was your character trying to achieve before the story started?
Listen to the world, learn its lessons.
2. Why do they, as a person, uniquely need to achieve this?
He seeks to find the imbalence in the Tao of the world that causes the
strife he had always heard about and now seen.
3. How did it go wrong?
In leaving the temple, he disobeyed the masters, and can never return.

Any suggestions on how to coax that out of them?

Or should I just alter them in an email, and see if they accept them?

Oh, and I'm totally psyched that you're using this! Thanks!

Here's the email I sent them:

Either start over or redefine the answers to your questions. If you stick with your situations, here is what I want:

Tim: You were unable to kill the commanding officers. How were you unable to do so?

Will: If you stayed at the temple, you'd be unable to hear the Tao. That is why you left. Why were you unable to hear it at the temple?

I'll post a response if and when I get one.

Will responded to:

If you stayed at the temple, you'd be unable to hear the Tao. That is why you left. Why were you unable to hear it at the temple?

with: One must have ones feet against the earth to hear the voice.

I don't think they're getting the point.

I should have included the "personal and immediate" in my request.

Or, where he likes all of them but knows there is only one that he can get, and in getting it will DESTROY everything else he has ever wanted.

I wonder if it'll be this hard once we get into play, forcing every scene out of them like a near empty tube of toothpaste.

I'll try again with this email:

Gentlemen,

What I mean is this: I don't just want to do what we've done in the past. I'm trying something different. We won't just be playing "How do you respond to this ongoing narrative?" We're gonna ramp it up. You're going to be the fugitive doctor bringing his sister aboard in a suitcase, the post-war captain that has to save his good-for-nothing war buddy even though he'll take the ship down in flames, or the young jedi-to-be returning to discover his aunt and uncle obliterated by the Empire. We need something hard-core, personal, immediate, demanding response right the heck now. We'll be doing this every so often, and let the narrative wrap around dealing with the consequences.

Before I send it, any critiques? I appreciate your help, everyone, this is my first attempt at running a game with my idea of good techniques that I've acquired from Indie-gaming and this forum.

So that it can't be bent against them by cruel or vindictive GMs, right?

And/or because they know that the GM won't use it because the game isn't about their character, nor (really) about them.

People believe that such character tension will only be used to reduce their agency as a player.

Player: I leap up! "How dare you accost this young woman!" I draw steel, prepared to run the varlet through.

GM: Just then he sweeps back his hood. It is Count Blackinsop, the only man who knows the secret of where your sister has disappeared to. "I'll be only too pleased to meet you in battle!" So now you have to back away from your own challenge. Unless, of course, you want to discard that entire story-line?

Player: (gritting teeth) No. My sister is more important ... you asshole.

The idea that character weaknesses could lead to more agency for the player is pretty darn foreign to a lot of gamers. They've never seen it done, but they've seen plenty of the opposite.

So that it can't be bent against them by cruel or vindictive GMs, right?

So it (a) cannot be used against them by the GM who (b) has his own story that they'll be playing, which (c) is what reward system is keyed into.

Having an individual personality is a bad thing; it means that you're not keyed into the GM's story, and thus will not be rewarded.

What you need to explain to these guys is that the game that they're about to play will reward them for having individual personalities, and will in fact penalize them for subsuming their individuality in favor of somebody else's story.

Joshua: Yeah, that's pretty much what I think that you've summed up their thinking. They've told me in the past that they're there for my story, whatever it'll be.

Fred: Hopefully, the system I've chosen (FATE) will also help them come to this conclusion. I won't be giving out any FATE points if their lives aren't complicated by their Attributes.

Tim's response (Immersionism?):

Er, I was all but assuming there would be people trying to get revenge
for me...getting his revenge. He did kill nearly a hundred men, after
all.
Now, if there is some crazy-sadistic-gaul-bitch (who happens to be the
third cousin of Le'Emperor, no less) that is out for Javier Aldana's
blood - he wouldn't be aware of it yet.
And I don't want to know about it until she shows up.


Details:
**Javier Aldana was the son of a minor Don in the plains of Iberia.
His family was famous for their horses.

**The war began in Iberia when Javier was just old enough to join the
army.

**After years of slowing losing ground to the Church's forces, the
Gaul reinforcements abandon the Aldana estates completely, abandoning
the natives and leaving them to die. Javier believes the Gaul
commander in charge killed the Iberian commander, looted the estates,
and left the evidence of his betrayal to be destroyed when the town
was razed by the Church forces.

**Destitute, he turns to a life of crime. He robs Gaul nobles on the
highway, eventually even gathering a small bandit gang as his
reputation grows.

**One day he recognizes one of the nobles he robs as one of the
soldiers that abandoned his family estates…he gets revenge. And
decides that is what his life should be.

**Over the course of four years he tracks down and kills every single
soldier he remembered serving at his family estates.

**The last kill is the old commander of the Gaul forces at his family
estates, now risen as a noble-of-some-import. Javier barely escapes
after he's done.

**He fled Gaul/Iberia and reverted to a bandit until he got to the
chaotic city-states of the Thousand Princes (where he was able to make
a better living as a sell-sword protecting those he once robbed).

**He gets hired by an Airship captain…

How about placing him at a diplomatic banquet, where violence is forbidden and the guards are too numerous to count, and his bounty hunter comes to speak to him?

You killed his father, prepare to die.

What Joshua "fuck a sheep, fuck a sheep, fuck a sheep, little boy" says is true.

Although at this point I think you need to talk to the players again and really see if they're buying into this whole thing at all. The issue of "he wouldn't be aware of it yet. And I don't want to know about it until she shows up." could well just be a "this is the way I've always gamed" thing that you have to help the players overcome. But, it also could be their honest preference. IF it is, if they really want to be surprised by you and not jump into their own thing, then you've got to fix up your communications on that point or the rest of this is going to be all pulling teeth.

Joshua: I agree with you. My first attempt at investing the group was by taking a map I'd gotten from Risk: Godstorm and gave them the premise: Enlightenment era Catholic Church abandons Europe and attempts to rule from Atlantis, an island continent raised in the Atlantic by the Church's magic. I threw in airships and told them I wanted a European war to take place during the last 30 years. They made every other thing happen (I went phase by phase and had them help develop the world's history at that point) and were supposed to use that to make their characters. A player that hasn't responded to emails made his intimately involved in the world's hisotry, much more so than Tim, and Will not at all.

In terms of investing them in it now, I don't see much more investment happening. I don't know what I'm going to do if they continue to balk at player created game elements.

Mark,

I don't know that you miscommunicated. I think they just didn't hear you.

My first several times of trying to get groups into nar style play and player-driven plots went much worse than this. It isn't something easy to do, what with the brain damage and all.

Mark, dude -- play something else. Play board games, play card games. Play head-to-head video games. It don't have to always be RPGs, especially if you've got another group doing what you like.

I can 100% identify with that last comment of yours, Mark. I'm about to take that very same step, to get out of the group that just doesn't give me what I need (and takes time away from me being with my wife and kids).

It's not easy, because sometimes people take their group commitments very seriously, but once you realize how much better you could use that time, it's inevitable.