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PCs versus Players
In Wednesday’s post, I discussed my Personal Rules for Narrating, and Uncle Dark pointed out that I was making a series of distinctions between the players themselves, the characters, and the party, though these distinctions were not made clear. Today, I thought I would correct this by explaining.
The Players. The Players themselves make up the core of any game, and without them the game obviously cannot exist: solitaire without a player is just a deck of cards. When Players come to any game, they have a set of expectations, not only for what the game will be like, but also how they would like the game to play out. In RPGs, these expectations will usually take the form of goals for their characters and the setting.
The Characters. Without the Players, the Characters are little more than pieces of paper and empty concepts. Characters are as essential to an RPG as the Players themselves, as the Characters are both the vehicle of the story and the game itself. In role-playing games and games where the player is introduced to their character over a period of time, it is not uncommon to discover that the goals of the Player and the goals of the Character are not one and the same, often due to a lack of knowledge about the other.
In most games, Players have two ways of playing their Characters:
- As Their Characters. Playing as a Character means that the Player has assumed the role of that Character, and the game is played as the Character would play it out and react to situations. Playing as a Character in this fashion may be considered role-playing, even if it is unaccompanied by role-acting.
- For Their Characters. Playing for a Character means that the Player is playing the game and participating in it in while not focusing primarily on how their character would react. This type of play is often passive, and can be found while playing video games, and in the behavior of many veteran role-players who have discovered that their play experience is not enriched by further role-playing in some situations, and that the outcome of many mundane situations is not altered by constant role-playing.
How will the goals differ for a Player/Character between these two modes of play?
A Player playing as their Character focuses primarily on the goals of the Character, and during actual play place their personal goals for the Character or the game at a lower priority than any in-game goals their Character might have. The immediate rewards of this type of play are often focused on the Character, while the long-term rewards are often focused around the experience of playing itself.
A Player playing for their Character will play often with their own personal goals as a Player placed first over those of the Character in-game. The immediate rewards of this type of play are often focused around the Player, and character rewards and goals, if in existence, will most likely be identical to those of the Player.
Why are these distinctions are important? The Player who plays as their Character has placed an amount of trust in the game and, by extension in RPGs, the Narrator who runs it. The Player trusts the game to be a rewarding experience simply through play itself, and that the game will meet any additional goals the Player may have had, either for themselves as a Player, the game itself, or even another Player or Character within the game.
Everyone has goals, Player, Character, or Narrator, and meeting the goals of each, both as a whole and on an individual basis, ensures play will be a success,
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Interesting. That does help clarify the passage in the Narrating Rules post.
Are you familiar with the Actor/Author/Pawn stance terminology?
Uncle Dark,
I wasn’t familiar with that terminology before now, but a quick Google search led me to good Forge article:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/4/
Thanks for the heads up.