So what does all this amount to and how does it affect my game you ask? Well, quite simply, it doesn't amount to anything really new, all story tellers skew thier worlds, consciously or unconsciously. The problem with this is that it hards to put into words, and even harder to put into effect in game play.
As the key role-playing game example, take White Wolf's World of Darkness. Okay, you say, it's dark, darker than our world, but how flawed and desperate should character's really be? Do drug addicts and muggers really have a place and Changeling: The Dreaming, and how much are you, as the GM/Storyteller willing to play this.
White Wolf has it's advantages, the systems of each game have darkness built in, but I know a larger group of Vampire players who wouldn't know what you were talking about if you refered to thier character's vampirism as a curse. How dark can a character be when they walk around with nearly limitless power and a cattle ranch from which to humanely draw blood, and what exactly is dark about The Cure, black make-up and blood-wyne.
I'll pause here to say that I'm not bashing Vampire or the people who play it (god knows I am one), but what I am trying to say is that a GM can be thinking dark, gritty, real while the players fantasizing about that pseudo-erotic blood bond between her character and her favorite Anne Rice novel vampire.
So what could a GM possibly do about it? Skew with numbers, and that's exactly what this article is all about. Below are a number of ways in which a GM can Skew thier universe, followed by a series of positive and negative levels, and descriptions, as well as traits that characters will have skewed. Skewed character traits are increased by a % equal to the Skew level, which gives all those little universe tweaks tangible reality.
It's important to note that Skewing an aspect of a game will immediatly make it more important, even if your Skewing it to the negative. Games with a Combat Skew of -50 will make combat ability of any sort a very powerful asset and will make combat of utmost importance.
Skew Tables (last moadified FEB 28, 2002)
Chances are, these player's GMs have been trying to give them a hundred things to do, but the player just sits there, lack-luster, wondering when the GM will get to the 'real action.'
As a long term GM, I've seen players do this a thousand times over, and every time it makes me want to throw up my hands in exasperation. The players begin whining about how little play time their characters get, and how there's nothing happening, so I drop some major clues and connection, and wait for them to come to the plot. Doing more, in my eyes, has always seemed to forced, and as a GM I don't care much weither or not the character play my story, as long as there's entertaining story happening.
Problem is that half the players out their create follower or loners or characters with no motivations or goals and they end up spending a lot of their times following the lead of the more experienced, cleverer players. Why do they do this? I can't say for sure, but most of the time it seems that their afraid of messing up, and that's what this article is about. You can't mess up, not if your playing your character faithfully.
As a GM, you can really help your players by finding room for their characters goals in your game. If your running a game about an evil werewolf on the prowell, and the player has missing parents, then it's easy enough to have the character's parent's insidiously killed by the werewolves, or in an even more diabolical but dramatic twist, the PCs parents could be the werewolves themselves. Even if their doesn't seem to be any immediate correlation between your plot and your character's goals, subplots and leads can be easily drawn into play. For example, the 'truth seeker' above could be made for a game that revolves around the characters being pulled into the distant past. This doesn't leave much room for space aliens, but you can drop hints that their was evidence that alien conspiracies were going on as early as 1200! This sort of plotting and subpoltting will make your players feel important, and allow everyone an ample lead into your game.
Another good GM hint when dealing with PC goals is to give a little extra focus to those players who normally take the back seat. Although this isn't likly to drastically alter the back-seat players playing style, their's a good chance that if you focus on your more out-going players goals that back seat-players wont no how to get their own characters involved.
Another bit of player advice, play extremists. Give each character a definite view point on the world, or one aspect of it, that they wont readily change. In past games when I was caught with an in experienced or untalented GM behind the reins, I've seen games really get saved by the zealousy of PCs. This extremness is a general rule in role-playing, a direct and well difined personalities, plots and dilogue make play easier for everyone involved. Even subtlity and conspiracy is often very direct (as anyone whose ever played an Elysium game of Vampire knows).
That's what 'Playing It To the Hilt' is all about, being direct and extreme. This is especially true if your playing lighter games, with younger players or in game wolrd/systems that have built in character types. In Dungeons and Dragons, for example, things can get very interesting very quickly if every player plays to the extreme of their alignments. When the Lawful Good character wont kill anything he doesn't have to, and insists on taking prisoners back to the local authorities, that plain old 'dungeon-crawl' can become very interesting indeed.
A word of caution though: don't set anything in stone. This is true for your PC goals as well as for playing extremes. Although you might begin play by being the 100%, gung-ho stereotype with a zealous fevor to collect/kill/know all the such-in-such, it's when you start to forget all those extremes and your just doing what (insert favorite characters name here) would do when you say what your character does, that real roleplaying begins.
