The possibility of discovery and change in a character is always good. New information drives action, and there's no better new information than a rock-bottom core change. :)

Mike: So who decides what the flag gets changed to if it gets changed in a conflict?

If Bob's character has a flag that is redefined by Eddie, is it still the same kind of flag? To some degree, you could say "Well, that no longer flags Bob's desires, though it may flag Eddie's desires" ... except that it was Bob who opened himself up to that change, so ...

Urgh. Tony's head hurt.

I agree that a system for "flagging" should include a system for changing flags.

In fact, I think 'changing flags' should be encouraged and rewarded. Real character development and change (such as seen in stories) should be encouraged and even integrated with/made to precede or follow from mechanical character improvement.

I like Burning Wheel's beliefs for this reason, they are not locked and can change, some cry out to be challenged and to change. It's made clear up front this is expected.

I speak as a GM of a long running campaign unable to get players into more narrativist gameplay and bored to tears (well not literally) with seeing some characters who however wonderfully imagined and backstoryed when created are always "the same person" even after over a decade of real time and game time passage who have never showed change or growth as a "person" even though they have travelled to different lands, encountered peoples of very different faiths, learned truths about the world not generally known etc. etc.

That said, yes some "flags" if they are "what makes this character someone I want to play" beliefs need to be capable of staying true and if you don't know "which might be that one" allowing any external to player dictation of them is dangerous. I prefer systems that may say, "time of a change" but leave the player to define what the change is. Using Dogs in Vineyard as an example, after calling on your relationship with Dad in a fight and losing is a great time to find story explanation to either strengthen or decrease it.

In terms of one technique/process, isn't the essence of a hard-core Bang the equivalent of seeing flags redefined, re-ordered in priority, found or discarded.

OK, what fixed flags do well is that they give you a very strong, clear vision of who the character is and always will be. Because of how they get handed on to other writers, superheroes are a great example here. Superman is always the big blue Boy Scout, Spider-Man is always covering his personal pain with bad jokes, Reid Richards is always smarter than anyone around him. It's to the point where playing a character with that name is practically a flag in itself. These are characters with a strong sense of identity. You know where you are with these characters.

Inasmuch as D&D classes are flags, this is the kind of flag they are.

What changeable flags do well is show the development of characters over time. Peter Parker gains confidence, wins Mary-Jane, marries her, eventually (in one continuity) divorces her.

TSOY Keys are classic examples of this kind of flag.

And both of them are realistic in terms of how we experience ourselves and people around us. There are things that change, and things that don't change.

And then there are things that look like they won't ever change and one day they do.

Maybe we need another distinction: flags that change gradually and flags that change suddenly and catastrophically. I tried for this in City of Masks, where relationships with other characters can be either positive or negative and either "fickle" or "enduring". A fickle relationship changes constantly under the influence of the other character's actions, but an enduring relationship doesn't change until the other character has repeatedly and over a long period done things that would change it, until eventually it changes "all at once".

So, let's say character A hates character B (8 points). If that's fickle, every time character B does something that would make the relationship 1 point more positive, it gets more positive by 1 point, then and there. But if it's enduring, character B has to do 8 points of positive stuff before it suddenly becomes neutral.

Posted By: MikeRMOK, what fixed flags do well is that they give you a very strong, clear vision of who the character is and always will be.
[SNIP]
What changeable flags do well is show the development of characters over time.

That's a really great distinction. As is this:

Posted By: MikeRMAnd then there are things that look like they won't ever change and one day they do.

This all relates to story pacing, I think: you want change to feel "right" for the character and the narrative, and that can often mean drawing it out, not changing too abruptly. It also makes a difference what timeframe you have for play--you want to change far quicker for a one-shot or short (say, 3 session) game than for a long-term campaign. Kind of like a movie vs. a TV series.

It'd be very useful, methinks, to have a means of flagging "growth speed" for characters, like your "enduring" and "ficle," Mike.

As a point of data, you do in fact resolve Kickers in Sorceror: you play until the Vengeance-thing is played out, then you write a new kicker. You do so until the character seems "done." Depending on how the Kicker pans out, your new one might still be Vengeance, against the same or a different target, or you may renounce vengeance, or you may have extracted vengeance and be satisfied. Or whatever. Point being, you do change your Flags.

But, you don't just change 'em whenever. You change 'en at a specific (though not precicely predictable) story point. Like changing Issues on your Spotlight Episode in PTA (which is a predictable point). It's kind of like a Flag Evaluation, especially in PTA, where you decide if you wanna keep going in the same direction, or strike out on a new path. All this in contrast to Keys, which are all, Bam! Renounce Beliefs! any ol' time, out of the blue.

All of which I was keen to point out and be brilliant, but Mike beat me to it. Dammit.

A question emerges from all this: what games actually have unchangeable Flags (as opposed to gradually changing)? Alls I can think of is Mike's D&D example, mostly because it's a pain in the freakin' ass to change Badassery Specialies (i.e. Classes) midstream. Alignment would seem, if anything, to be D&D's changeable Flag, though in practice I've seen that treated overwhelmingly like a Fixed Flag; that is, characters are always LG or CN or whatever forever and ever Amen. Are there any games out there that explicitly set up Fixed Flags as such? Maybe Capes with the Comics Code, though even that is subject to review, like "OK, noww the kid gloves are off, man. Gwen Stacy can die."

Peace,
-Joel

Thanks, guys.

Posted By: misubaIt'd be... socially interesting to offer players a dial of how many flags are subject to change and when, for how much mechanical reward.

My "locking attributes" thing in the Pentasystem (which is one of my many steals from Tony) is pretty much this. You decide at the start of the session how many "free locks" each player gets, plus you can buy more. As well as being able to "sacrifice" a locked attribute for guaranteed success in a conflict, you can also change out the locked attributes at the beginning of the next session, and sell them off if you don't want so many.

Also, I'm working on blending my "gateways" idea in - things that are conditionally unlockable if you achieve certain other preconditions, and give you both new resources and new challenges.

So you could say that the changeability or otherwise of flags is of definite interest to me.

I keep wanting to say that there is a third option---flags that get re-imagined. Maybe this is just a fixed flag, but... but I want to say it feels different.

So in Sex in the City, one of girls was always pining for a husband. One day, a couple seasons in, she finds the "perfect" man, rich and handsome. She gets married! Yay, issue solved, right? Not quite, once married, things start falling apart. Hubby's family is rude, and hubby has some sexual problems (if I'm remembering right).

The point here is that the situation is re-imagined around a common theme. In a game, both situations could be covered by a broad flag, like PTA's Issues ("looking for the perfect marriage" or something). But in most games I can think of, flags tend to be a bit more specific, such that the above would require a change from "looking for a husband" to "problematic relationship".

What do you think about that? Like I said, maybe it's still just a fixed flag...

Isn't the difference between a fixed aspect of the character and a changing aspect of the character basically what a player chooses to do in a specific situation?

Isn't it then counter-productive to distinguish between fixed and changeable flags, thus forcing a decision about them before the situation actually gets played out?

Tony, I don't quite follow. I mean, I agree with what you just wrote, but I don't see how this ties into your original post. I'll try to explain how I understood your original post and maybe you can help me out then.

Flags are about labelling certain aspects of your character in a way that lets the other people at the table (especially the GM) know that those are important to you. That you want to see them featured in the game somehow (usually via relevant narration).

Those flagged aspects can be dealt with in different ways during the game. You've mentionend two: 'static' and 'flexible'. The former would be a kind of fixture in the game ('Jack always looses his cool quickly'). The latter would be more of a struggle or part of the character's development ('Jack is learning to keep his temper in check'). Since both are closely tied to the character and the decisions he makes, they are also closely tied to what the player chooses to let 'Jack' do at any given moment. Thus, the choice between static aspect (continuing to play the character in certain way) and a flexible aspect (breaking with the character's tradition) lies with the player at any moment during the game.

I think this is true for both TSoY and Sorcerer. Up until the point where the player chooses to change the aspect, flagged aspects are indistinguishable from one another. Differentiating between the two before the game, only seems to take away the unpredictability of player choice during the game. Everybody is just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

What am I missing?

It seems reasonable to me that the player playing the character should be able to decide to turn a fixed flag into a gradual flag or sudden flag if they so choose. It lets the other people at the table know that an issue is back on the table. There might be a number of reasons for such a shift, but I think the important point is that the decision lie with the player.

I like the setting/situation parallel.

Here's a proposal: there are certain categories of things, in a given game, that are always fixed flags. Nationality would be a good one. You were born in a certain country, you grew up there. Regardless of if you later renounce your citizenship, fight against that country, rail against it, whatever, that's still your origin. Your relationship to the flag has changed, but "the flag is still there" (to slightly paraphrase a certain relevant song).

In a game set in Britain before about 1950, social class would be another fixed flag. Again, you could try to conceal your class origins, you could do the whole Eliza Doolittle, but deep down you're always a Cockney.

So what that does is it sets up a category of facts about identity that remain true whether you like or accept them or not. You can rebel, you can kick against the pricks, but you just can't change that about yourself - you can only change your relationship with the flag, not the flag itself.

There are also internal things about yourself that you can't change. You'll always be an introvert, however hard you pretend. You'll always be drawn to certain things, repelled from some other things.

There are other things you can change - your occupation, say. Your marital status, in the example above. But changing those is only ever a cover over the fact that you can't change your essential nature; you're changing the situation but you can't affect the setting.

Yes?

Posted By: Max PMike has a good point that are certain classes of things that are reasonable as completely fixed flags and others that aren't. From the fighter example Tony gave, I'm looking at it that "violent" is much more reasonable than "fighter." Fighter is an occupation, violent is an internal personality thing. That same fighter might have a religious conversion and become a pacifist - but no matter how he acts, he's still a violent person at heart. I think I follow the train of thought, but I'm not sure I agree.

That's a great example. There's about a thousand Westerns out there that revolve around this theme of the violent man who's trying to be peaceful until the bad guys push him too far.

It's got a certain psychological plausibility, too. [neuro-geek] People don't often change major parts of their personality. Successful people get better at modulating and expressing their personalities in effective ways, though. [/neuro-geek]

I don't think one kind of flag is better than another, though. There's something to be said for a game which expresses the idea, "You knew I was a lying bastard when you chose to play me." And there's an inherent interest in the spectable of a bad man trying to be good, or a good man trying to be bad.

Posted By: TonyLB

Posted By: Max PFighter is an occupation, violent is an internal personality thing.

Nnnnnn ... I see what you're saying, butShane(just to choose an example) is not a violent man in the movie to which he gives his name. He is, however, still a gunslinger. I think that many flags that you wouldn'tthink ofas naturals for fixed status actually do really well when you give them a go.

You can certainly be one or the other, and not necessarily both. But that was my point: either one can change independently of the other. To reverse my earlier example, maybe Shane becomes a violent man. He may or may not still be a gunslinger.

Like, "On the run." It seems intensely situational, right? You can try to, y'know, address it. A guy can clear his name, settle down, become respectable. What does it mean to say that, after all that, he's still on the run?

Sure, this can lead to interesting results. And interesting results are often fun. But suppose a player fixes a flag, arrives at a point where they're witnessing the interesting results, and decides it isn't as fun as they thought it would be? That they would find it more fun to address something else? Who are we to fix them into a spot that's unfun? That's the problem I see with fixed flags being interpreted as "fixed forever" rather than "fixed for now, until we decide otherwise." It has the potential to dead-end fruitful (fun!) paths of exploration in the present because we're still adhering to a vision that was formed some time in the past.

Max, Georgios: You guys are offering your personal tastes as objective judgments. You prefer total freedom, and that's fine, but you're saying that fixed structure is "unhelpful," "a dead end" and a "straitjacket" and that's not fine.

I've heard your tastes, and they simply aren't universal statements of The One True Way of RPGs. Can we leave it at that, or do we actually need to get into an argument about whether or not rigid structure can be a useful tool?

Come on now, Tony. Calling people who disagree with you dogmatic one-true-wayists is bad form. Your personal experiences and observations are not inherently more objective than anybody else's.

You seem to argue that establishing your main interest in the game before-hand and sticking with it no matter what provides a helpful structure for the game. Nothing in my gaming experiences supports this claim, but I can point to numerous players and games played to directly contradict it. That doesn't mean I'm passing off my personal preference as fact. At least no more than you do.

If you're not interested in discussing the validity of your assumption, fine. Just say so. But don't paint other people as narrow-minded and incapable of arguing objectively, just because they happen to disagree with you.

That's just rude and it makes you look foolish.

Remember that there's no such thing as "better" design choices, simply choices that are better for certain design goals.

Fixed flags may not work quite as well for long-term play. Maybe, I don't know. (Character class is potentially a flag, and many old-school designs don't allow a character to change their class.) For short term play, though, I don't really see a problem.

Also, remember that flags are just an abstract concept. How they work in play is going to depend on the specific design. Depending on what Tony wants to discuss, it might be beneficial to drop the whole "flag" thing for a bit and simply discuss the underlying phenomena. Players have certain issues & themes they're interested in exploring. Sometimes these issues get resolved. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get re-invented along a common theme.

Tony, is this still the thread for talking about the use of fixed flags static character qualities?

If so, I was thinking about this topic today and it hit me that this is really a core element of a lot of noir fiction. The ending of The Maltese Falcon, for example, really revolves around the idea that people don't change their spots, or at least not all their spots. Sam Spade has lost a partner and fallen in love, but he's still a stand-up guy who "takes the fall for nobody."

In fact, the use of static qualities is a great recipe for generating doomed love affairs and tragic outcomes in general, when the "soft" part of the character's feelings and desires get pinched by the rigid, unchanging part.

Another thing that a fixed trait can do...and this is implied in earlier discussion even though not explicitly stated...is get you, the player, out of a rut. Lots of players have certain elements that they tend to bring to their characters again and again. I know I do. (My list of black sheep iconoclast characters is a long one, for example.)

A system with fixed traits allows the player to say, "I always do X with every character. So here I go, I'm taking ~X as a character trait. There it is. It's on the sheet...in indelible ink. I can't escape it now!"

One of the cool things you can do (and I'm toying with creating mechanical support for this) is have your character struggle repeatedly - and hopelessly - against something about themselves that isn't going to change. The resolution is not that it finally does change (though that, too, is an interesting resolution) but that they accept that it isn't going to change.

Again, the setting/situation parallel holds. It could be really interesting to have your character(s) trying to change things in the setting that they have no hope of changing because of their immense inertia, and to specifically mark going in that this will be the case.

"We're going to try to destroy all magic!"

"We're going to overthrow a major government with a small, fanatical group of inexperienced young people!"

"We're going to get the entire Internet to consist of reasoned, nuanced discussion!"

Well, no, you're not. But your doomed struggle to do so may be fun to watch.

Another idea with fixed flags: there's lots of situations in both games and in fiction where people want to have their cake and eat it too, be both a Orthodox rabbi and happily gay*, be the leader of their clan and also marry the boy/girl they love, instead of the one they're supposed to marry. Fixed flags can be a way to tell the player, "you can't have both things, sorry."

But it might be even more interesting for the character to have a Fixed flag and have one thing he/she wants, but not everything. So the rabbi can stay a rabbi and be out and proud, but he can't be Orthodox anymore. He's got to leave his synagogue and the community he's lived in all his life, and find a new way of being. The warlord can marry the one they love, but the clan of the snubbed bride or groom will go to war to avenge the insult. Or maybe the warlord will abdicate, has to go on the run with his lover, and will be hunted by his former allies who want to kill him to make a clear path of succession for the new guy.

That's sort of an economic conflict, one good vs. another good. We do that all the time in story-games, but I'd like to see a strong mechanical support for this kind of drama. (If someone knows a game that does that, feel free to point it out).

Danny
*No desire to offend here, it just seems like an impossible situation to be in from where I stand. Also, Jew vs. Jew conflicts are the last untouched frontier in RPG's.

Posted By: TonyLB

Posted By: DannyKTony, is this still the thread for talking about the use offixed flagsstatic character qualities?

I sure want it to be.

I think you're right about the tragic (or at least sad) outcomes, too. I think that people coming to terms with their constraints, and maybe coming to terms with the idea that they [i]cannot be happy[/i] within their constraints, is a cool, melancholy, powerful story element.

They can also be used to convey a moral (perhaps).

Herakles had the static flag of "quick to anger." Lady Macbeth had the static flag of "ambition." We know what happened to them.

A couple of rambling observations. I'm still working a bunch of this stuff out in my head.

1. if the focus of the story turns on the tension between a character's static flag(s) and one or more other characters/setting elements, then I see two possibilities with regard to the role of the players. Either the players are supposed to be ritually enacting out a drama according to a formula, or else player input decides the content of the moral lesson being conveyed. Either the players are supposed to act out the rough arc of Macbeth (ambition leads to destruction), or else they're trying to re-write Macbeth so that Macbeth & co. win. Which could be awesome, either way.

2. What about a variant where fixed and dynamic flags are used together, but the dynamic flags can only be "changed" in service of one or more of the fixed flags? The character with static: ambition also has dynamic: hates the king and dynamic: loves his country. But he can only change these flags or buy them off if in doing so it furthers his ambition.

Just throwing it on the wall and seeing what sticks.