On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Roger Burton West wrote:

RBW>One of the best GMs I know has actively got players worried by having an
RBW>argument with himself (as two separate NPCs). One player said later "I
RBW>thought it was going to come to blows". He doesn't do voices, but he can
RBW>project a character like nobody's business.

I can't project characters, either.  Certainly not like that.  I'm always 
acutely conscious that I'm expecting players to look at me and envision, 
say, a seven-foot leonine alien.  Ain't workin'.  Maybe I underestimate 
their ability to suspend disbelief.

RBW>I don't do voices either but I try to do mindset. I'm fairly poor at
RBW>improvising dialogue, but the content tends to be right; as far as I'm
RBW>concerned, that's the important thing. I find it easier when I'm GMing,
RBW>possibly because I've had time to think in advance about what the NPC
RBW>knows and what his reactions might be to what the PCs can tell him...

Sometimes.  Sometimes that's harder for me, because I know my PCs better 
than J. Random NPC.

RBW>That works for some players, but in my experience it does tend to give a
RBW>feeling of detachment, particularly when it's something that could be
RBW>covered by direct speech. I'm fortunate in my regular groups: we don't
RBW>have people who need to make formal distinctions between in-character
RBW>and out-of-character comments, so we can keep a fairly informal flow
RBW>going.
RBW>(I'm assuming that you're not playing in a noir game, of course, in
RBW>which that sort of narration could be entirely in-genre.)

Many of my characters tend to be very internalized (or something like 
that, anyway); I'm interested in their thoughts on things when they 
wouldn't necessarily give any evidence of them.  So the only way the other 
players get to know any of it is in our sort-of-bluebooking interludes 
when we catch up on things via the mailing list.

Ditto Bill's character Stalker.  When Stalker was introduced, I was 
playing a different characters.  (No, that's not a typo.)  The Pack didn't 
care much about Stalker's motivations, and if they'd been told the 
"caring" would be through the filter of an alien group mind ("okay, so the 
rest of your family was killed, and you're a solitary mind-fragment.  How 
sad.  Would you like us to euthanize you humanely?")  And then when I 
switched to Fastlane, we glossed the getting-to-know-you out of game, so 
until Bill brought it up on the mailing list recently I found out I didn't 
really know how wrapped up he was in revenge.

Soooo... then Fastlane happened to capture (offscreen) the guy who gave 
the order to kill Stalker's family.  And turned him over to the 
authorities, to keep Stalker from doing anything he might (or at least 
ought to) regret.  We sort of played out Fastlane telling Stalker, but it 
was really just me telling Bill, and while it could have been an 
interesting intra-party-conflict scene, it ended up not being so, because 
I really wasn't adequately acting it.

Maybe we *should* play it noir...

-- 
Karen J. Cravens  silver@phoenyx.net
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